Author : college football/basketball writer @MattZemek, Editor at @TrojansWire .
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Bobby Bowden, one of the greatest college football coaches who ever lived, died Sunday at age 91. Remembrances and tributes will continue to roll in, and every Florida State game this season will bring forth at least one Bowden anecdote on television or radio.
There are so many things to say about Bobby Bowden, so many items of importance and value to be noted, that they can’t all be gathered in one place at one time. There is simply too much to comprehend in accounting for this one immensely influential life and career.
In measuring the enormity of Bowden’s career as a coach — gauging where he stands in the pantheon of the greatest coaches ever — the foremost thought which jumps to the surface of awareness is simply this: Timing influences how we think of and measure college football’s greatest coaches.
Timing has greatly affected the career arcs of the sport’s foremost coaches.
Very simply: Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney have been able to collect national titles and national title game coaches not only because they are great coaches, but because the four-team playoff has given them a margin for error Bobby Bowden did not have for most of his career at Florida State.
Any serious college football historian knows Bobby Bowden’s ultimate achievement as a coach: 14 straight top-four finishes from 1987 through 2000. That’s a streak on par with Roger Federer making 23 straight semifinals at the four major tennis tournaments, or Tom Landry having 20 straight winning seasons with the Dallas Cowboys. It’s a run of uncommonly great high-level consistency which is hard for the brain to fully process and absorb.
The obvious question Bowden’s 14-year magnum opus raises: What if Bowden had been able to partake in a four-team playoff? My goodness.
He would have won at least seven or eight national championships. Conversely, if Saban and Dabo coached in the 1990s and not today, they wouldn’t have won as many national titles. 2011 Alabama doesn’t win the natty in a pre-BCS world, neither does 2017 Alabama. Clemson losing at home to Pittsburgh likely proves decisive in a pre-BCS or playoff season.
Also keep in mind about timing: Florida State played Miami in early October, sometimes earlier, for most of Bowden’s career. Imagine if that game had been played in November. FSU certainly would have won several more times.
The point here is clearly not to diminish or undercut what Saban and Dabo have achieved. It is only to point out that in college football, a sport which has had a hard time making up its mind over the past 25 years on what kind of postseason format it should have, the presence or absence of specific postseason structures has either opened or closed the door to legacy-changing opportunities for various coaches.
Bobby Bowden faced a closed door for most of his career. Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney faced an open one. Like it or not, that is part of the reason Saban is considered the best ever.
Never forget what Bobby Bowden would have achieved if a four-team playoff existed in the late 1980s.
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